


preparing

by ninemoons42



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Force Visions, Gen, Jedi Training, Meditation, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7617223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey stands atop a high cliff on Ahch-To and meditates.</p><p>“Have you thought of the ones you wish to protect?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	preparing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nekosmuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekosmuse/gifts).



She is still getting used to the smell of the wind on Ahch-To. To the smell of salt.

Salt is like sand, Rey thinks, as her knee trembles and the muscles of her foot cramp and shudder and recoil. Salt gets into every crevice. Salt dries out her scalp -– and, as the evidence in the tiny shard of mirror in her makeshift quarters shows –- bleaches her hair. There are already lightening strands, there are already lightening roots. Salt crusts on her skin and flakes off onto her threadbare sheets, gritty edges when she turns over in her sleep. Salt gets into the bottles full of water that she keeps tightly sealed at all times. 

Overhead, a flying shape lurches clumsily into view and then plummets toward the sea, and the Force brings her whispers of hunger and fear and she keeps her fingers curled into relaxed fists, lets the bloodthirsty bird-like thing flash past her and away, its primitive hunting shriek nearly lost in the constant whistling cry of the winds.

She shivers. She burns. The sun is at its peak and it beats down upon every inch of exposed skin, and she adds the salt of her sweat to the salt blown onto her skin, and still: the Force is quiet and it flows, steadily. It supports her.

Another cramp, in the other foot this time. 

She licks her lips. Empties her mind again. For a moment she’d caught a glimpse of the General –- Leia –- sitting at the head of a long table. For a moment she’d thought she’d heard Finn’s voice. She thinks he would try to be encouraging, in that awkward fleeting way that he had. He’s a presence in the Force, he’s a distant light in a distant system, and she doesn’t know if he’s awake. There is a communications array in one of the chambers near Luke Skywalker’s quarters, and it’s a little slapdash but Rey knows that it’s all in good working order. But she’s not allowed to use the array. 

There are very good reasons for silence. 

When she dreams, in the precious depths of much-needed sleep, the Force throws scattered images her way. Master Skywalker, possibly younger, his face a bloody red mask. (Snow and blood and tears.) Leia, hands behind her back, staring at a lightsaber. (Is it hers? Does Leia really have a lightsaber?) Han Solo, mending a tear in an unfamiliar leather jacket that nonetheless bears the imprints of his broad shoulders. (Rey likes the other jacket better. The only one she’d ever seen him in.)

And every now and then she can still hear the screaming in the prison cells of Starkiller Base. The screams of prisoners, the screams of stormtroopers. The screams and the unstable whine of an unstable red blade.

She’s grinding her teeth when the Force makes her crash back into her own body, into her meditation. Feet flat on the ground. Salt-crust on her wrists, on her toes. She casts a shadow, now, on the stunted grass that clings tenaciously to the rocky soil. 

A flash of color. She blinks, and she falls to her knees, and she’s exhausted but –- where is that color –-

A feather. Brilliant red bars on a fine mottled gray. She imagines, and the Force sharpens the image for her: a stately animal, long spindly legs and long elegant wings.

“Beautiful,” she whispers, and her lips are parched around that word.

She empties her canteens. The water overflows her mouth and washes some of the salt on her skin away.

Tomorrow is important. Tomorrow is when she’ll meditate about something _hers_. 

Tomorrow, Master Skywalker had told her. Tomorrow, she’ll begin the process of building her own lightsaber. She already has the crystal. A mass of fine needle-shapes, clear and sparkling with more than just light.

A step behind her.

“Have you thought of the ones you wish to protect?”

Rey blinks salt from her eyes, and nods.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
